Alain Gadbois Posted February 11, 2023 Share Posted February 11, 2023 Great riveting work! Very well done! Alain mywifehatesmodels and Mark_C 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMaben Posted February 12, 2023 Share Posted February 12, 2023 Sweet ! ! ! mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themongoose Posted February 12, 2023 Share Posted February 12, 2023 Those rivets are really gonna ‘pop’ under paint! mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mywifehatesmodels Posted February 13, 2023 Author Share Posted February 13, 2023 Test fit of prop and spinner. Added rivets to the spinner, too. I've been working on the seams of the wing leading edge. The spaces between and around the cannon barrels being the more difficult part. After the initial filling and smoothing, I thought I better check the fit of the brass Master barrels before I got too far. I had done some drilling on the barrel shrouds before assembly of the wing halves, but I'm glad I thought to check because they were still on the tight side. I have since drilled them out further and should have no trouble positioning the barrels, later on. Sorry for the poor photos, but I think you get the idea. I still have to work on the belly seam and I managed to get a nice glue fingerprint on it, too. Oh well...I'll be sanding it, anyway. The belly seam, along with the seam for the separate tail section, are probably the only real drawback to this kit. One could argue the same for the lower wing ejection chute panels, also. However, they're much less obtrusive than the ones on the Hasegawa Fw 190 kits. The catch is that most N1K2s appear to have a bare aluminum underside. So, getting everything smoothed and properly primed is a challenge, too. I also wish this kit had cowl flaps in the open position, but now I'm just venting.... Cheers, John Greif8, MikeMaben, BradG and 13 others 16 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greif8 Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 The riveting looks nice enough that one almost wants to leave the build in bare plastic - almost. Great work John! Ernest mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMaben Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 Real nice work so far John. mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mywifehatesmodels Posted February 14, 2023 Author Share Posted February 14, 2023 Thanks, all! 11 hours ago, Greif8 said: The riveting looks nice enough that one almost wants to leave the build in bare plastic - almost. Great work John! Ernest Ernest, I have to admit, I'm almost paranoid about painting it! Actually, it will be a good lesson. Since I moved to acrylic lacquers, a couple builds ago, I'm working more on applying extremely thin layers of various shades, building up the the final color. If all goes to plan, the rivets should "Pop", for sure. But, if I get too heavy with the paint, it could cover them up, instead. I think this may also be the first build where I'll be using MRP's black primer on nearly everything. However, it will also have a coat of aluminum on top of that, then the green on the upper surfaces. Plenty of opportunity to get thick with the paint, so patience will be the key. I currently have all the seams filled and primary sanding done. Rivets and panel lines have been restored (but I'll be checking once again, before applying primer). I believe that my slight misalignment of the fuselage halves also created a step at the belly seam, or at least made it worse. I had a choice of filling a bigger step, or misaligned panel lines. The step needed to be filled either way, so I chose to align the panel lines as well as I could. I also had to restore a small strip of plastic at the starboard wing root that comes off of the top wing panel and fits in a tiny spot between the wing root and the flap. This one was broken before it even made it out of the bag and of course I lauched the original piece into another dimension, within the black hole that is my shop! So, I had to make a new one from some sheet styrene that I cut and shaped. RIght now, I'm working on the remainder of the items in/around the cockpit/canopy that need to be painted before I can attach clear parts, mask and start painting. Thanks for tagging along! John Greif8, tucohoward, LSP_Kevin and 6 others 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 Coming together very nicely, John! Kev mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greif8 Posted February 15, 2023 Share Posted February 15, 2023 Your build is going to look great under paint John. Ernest mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mywifehatesmodels Posted February 20, 2023 Author Share Posted February 20, 2023 (edited) So, a lot has happened since my last post. I should have documented more of what I did in photos, but the last five days are a blur and I didn't take time to photograph much. I figured I better show something at this point, before getting any further. From where I last left off, the next step was applying the MRP Black primer. Once that was done, I fixed some more seams...again... and then shot several thin coats of MRP White Aluminum, over the entire airframe. At this point, I was worried about the rivets being covered up. It took a LOT of aluminum to cover the black primer. However, it turned out better than the following photo would suggest. I'm still learning the best ratio of thinning and best method of application for the MRP aluminum. I do like the stuff, but the thinning ratio can be tricky. After this was done, I shot the yellow leading edge ID strips. For this, I started with a mix of Mr. Hobby's RLM 04 Yellow and mixed it 5:1 with some RLM 23 Red. It made a deep, orange/yellow color for a base. My plan was to go back and just do highlights with the straight 04 Yellow, but ended up making some adjustments to the placement of the strips and shot everything with straight yellow, so that's pretty much all you see, now. Once that was done, I masked them off and proceeded to start with the base color for the upper surface. For that, I'm using Mr. Hobby's Kawanishi Green, but I started by mixing it 50/50 with flat white and painted a splotchy scheme over the entire top surface. I came back with a similar mix of the green, but using yellow instead of white (forget the ratio, but mostly green with a couple drops of yellow). Then, I shot the straight Kawanishi Green as kind of a preshade on the panel lines and other select areas, giving this paint more opacity. Lastly, I thinned out the same straight Kawanishi Green and gave it a coat to blend it all together. At this point, I could see that the rivets were still visible, but would need to be uncovered here and there. I used a 3200 grit sanding pad in some spots to thin the paint back at expose the rivets. I'll be doing a bit more of this and probably follow up with finer grit pads to smooth things out before adding washes and weathering. I also added the Hinomaru using the mask set from Dead Design and Mr. Hobby's Japanese Insignia Red. The vinyl masks worked very well. For the fuselage insignia, it's supposed to have the white border painted out. I believe the kit uses black for this outline on the decals. I've also seen dark green used for this, so I decided on a Black Green and used Mr. Hobby's version, which is actually more of a dark olive drab. I added a couple drops of Rubber Black and it turned out as a very dark black/grey/green. Exactly what I was hoping for. Poor lighting, once again, but this gives you an idea of where I'm headed. I forgot to get a picture of the underside, but you get the idea. Still a long way to go, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for checking it out! John Edited February 20, 2023 by mywifehatesmodels LSP_Kevin, Landrotten Highlander, BradG and 7 others 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMaben Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 Nicely subtle John mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennismcc Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 That's a really nice varied paint job. Cheers Dennis mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greif8 Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 Very nicely done John. Using different tones of the base green turned out quite well. I think you got the right shade of orange/yellow for the leading edge marking, it looks convincing. Ernest mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mywifehatesmodels Posted February 20, 2023 Author Share Posted February 20, 2023 Thanks, guys! I know the color really isn't accurate. However, the LED lighting at my bench gives it even more of a glow, especially in the photos. It does have kind of a Jade quality to it. Kind of cool, even if not historically accurate. Looks better in person and I'm hoping I can get good outdoor photos of it, once completed, but they're forecasting 2 feet of snow here fin the next few days, so it's going to be a while. February in Minnesota... Right now working on thinning the paint in some areas and applying some oil washes here and there. Going to have my daughter help me with the Cricut tonight and attempt to cut some masks for the numbers and anything else we can get to work. Not quite sure how small and can go yet and she has a lot more tome on the machine than I do, which is zero at this point. We'll see how it goes. Worst case is I will end up cutting them by hand, using the decals as a trace stencil. Thanks again, John MikeMaben, themongoose and Alain Gadbois 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tucohoward Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 Really nice work, John! I've always enjoyed enjoyed your work a lot. Cheers, Jay mywifehatesmodels 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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